The issue recently cropped-up (03-May-2012) because, in the past, Thursday polling days coincided with the Algerian weekend. However, since then (24-Jul-2009), Algeria changed its weekends from Thursday-Friday to the "mixed" or "semi-universal" Friday-Saturday weekend.

Five years ago (17-May-2007 and 17-Feb-2007), a one-off public holiday was also declared in Algeria to facilitate participation in those parliamentary elections.